Like many others, I often have pinned tabs of all sorts of things in my browser. Some of them linger there for months. Others for years, I shamefully admit. Of the handful of Gutenberg-related browser tabs I have had pinned since late 2020, one of them finally had the sort of movement I have been waiting on. The Gallery block …
New Private Slack Channel Created for Full-Time Sponsored WordPress Contributors
As part of an experiment designed to improve coordination of contributor teams, WordPress has launched a new Slack channel for full-time sponsored contributors. Josepha Haden Chomphosy, the project’s executive director, announced the new closed Slack channel on Friday evening in a post that drew critical feedback from contributors who pushed for more clarification. “2020 was filled with hardships for many …
Upcoming Changes and Steps for an Overhauled WordPress Theme Review System
On Wednesday, WordPress executive director Josepha Haden Chomphosy posted the next steps forward for themes and reviews for the official theme directory. In the post, she describes the tools and types of access the Themes Team needs. She also laid out some other goals for the system. The timeline is to have much of this in place by early 2022. …
Elementor Patches XSS Vulnerabilities Affecting 7 Million WordPress Sites
Elementor users who haven’t updated recently will want to get on the latest version 3.1.4 as soon as possible. Researchers at Wordfence disclosed a set of stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in the plugin to its authors in February, which was partially patched at that time and additional fixes were released the second week of March. Wordfence summarized the vulnerabilities in …
WooCommerce Live Africa to Host First Online Meetup Event, March 18, 2021
WooCommerce Live Africa is hosting its first online meetup on Thursday, March 18, 2021, from 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM GMT+1. The new regional group is part of the WooCommerce network of more than 100 meetups with nearly 30,000 members across 40 countries. Events will be focused on topics pertinent to store owners and entrepreneurs with a focus on making it easy …
Attackers Continue to Exploit Vulnerabilities in The Plus Addons for Elementor Plugin
Last week, security researchers at Seravo and WP Charged reported a critical zero-day vulnerability in The Plus Addons for Elementor on March 8, 2021. WPScan categorized it as an authentication bypass vulnerability: The plugin is being actively exploited to by malicious actors to bypass authentication, allowing unauthenticated users to log in as any user (including admin) by just providing the …
Gutenberg Block Manager Plugin Enables Global Block Removal and Recategorization
The world of Gutenberg blocks is expanding. WordPress’ official block directory launched in June 2020 with just 60 single-block plugins. Today, it has grown to more than 480 blocks. As users incorporate more blocks into their websites, the block inserter can become a very long list to scroll when browsing. Block management capabilities were added to Gutenberg in version 5.3, …
2nd Annual Atarim Web Agency Summit Kicks Off March 23
Atarim is launching its 2nd annual Web Agency Summit in a couple of weeks. The free event will run from March 23 – 26. The goal of the event is to help agencies and freelancers in the WordPress space grow sustainable businesses. Atarim is the company formerly known as WP Feedback. In February, the business rebranded because its primary product …
New Full Site Editing Testing Challenge: Create a Custom 404 Page
The Full Site Editing (FSE) Outreach program has launched its third testing call, continuing the effort to engage users in a structured testing flow focused on specific practical tasks. Previous rounds had testers building a custom homepage and exploring the distinction between editing modes (template vs page/post). The challenge in round #3 is to create a fun, custom 404 page. …
WordPress.com and Jetpack Launch Story Block for Mobile Apps
Automattic-owned WordPress.com launched its new Story-publishing feature today. Currently, only users with the WordPress for Android or iOS apps can add stories. Self-hosted users with Jetpack-connected sites can publish via the mobile apps too. The development team previewed the Story feature in January, launching a public beta on the Android app. Stories are essentially media and text slideshows. They have …